Events
Vancouver Transport and insights for Australia
Thursday 30 June 2011
Vancouver is a big city, geographically spread and has its own transport implications. Many of the challenges we see in Australian towns can also be found here, though there is a variation in structural approaches. Vancouver (and other Canadian cities) can play a significant part in understanding Australia's transport future based on population growth of Canada over the years where it jumped from around 25m people,and most people know that Canada experienced significant population change in a relatively short space of time, something that Australia will also experience over coming decades. An automotive client has used Canada as a clear 'line of sight' to Australia's transport future.
For Australia's transportation the clues sit within the similarities of places like Vancouver, not in the differences. There's calls for more buses and public transport, traffic flow management in peak times and a vast network of cycling opportunities. In assessing how Vancouver coped with a spike in population and the stress and pressure applied to transport infrastructure, we can formulate an idea of what Australian cities will have to deal with in the coming ten to fifteen years. Whether we rely on the past or assess a potential future will be of critical importance. Australian cities (and our general population) may be able to rely on history as its guide, and my bet is that any approach that ignores lessons from others, is one that risks a future based on sunk costs and trapped planning assumptions. I'll write more as I complete the tour
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Events
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Have just spent a few hours discussing the Future of Money, hosted by James Bibby at Microsoft in Sydney and facilitated by Peter Vander Auwera from SWIFT/Innotribe. I'd like to flag that everyone understood that the session was way too short for such a big topic and everyone would agree that we just scratched the surface (not that the scratch would leave too much of a mark just yet). The session was a kick start for a group from a wide variety of interests: banks, payment providers' IT specialists and some specialty consultancies.
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Wednesday 2 May 2012
Ernst & Young and GreenBiz have completed a survey of business executives looking at the development of Corporate Sustainability around the world. The report shows that there has been a clear rise in awareness; that employees are a core source driving sustainability actions; that reduction of costs is a core appeal and that return on investment in sustainability actions is required to be judged in the same way as other corporate investments. For me this poses a dichotomy of thinking - the environment was built up over millennia and our use of it has taken just a couple of centuries yet we judge sustainability actions at the same 'speed of delivery' criteria. That poses a challenge and is perhaps an unrealistic set of expectations.
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Tuesday 24 April 2012
On the eve of ANZAC day here in Australia ABC Radio Darwin's Vicki Kerrigan chats with futurist Marcus Barber on the future of war - what the future triggers of war might be and how war will be fought
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